What is Malpractice Insurance?

According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and the Center for Insurance Policy and Research, medical professional liability insurance or sometimes known as medical malpractice insurance is a type of insurance that protects physicians and other licensed medical professionals. These health care professional can be nurses and dentists for example. Medical malpractice insurance helps these professional with any liability associated with wrongful practices that result in injuries to the body, medical expenses that can occur, property damage and as well as providing costs for defending lawsuits that can occur from these claims.

In addition to covering bodily injury and property damage, medical malpractice also covers personal injuries such as mental anguish. Medical malpractice insurers spend a great deal of time and fund to investigate and defense claims where there can be a negative patient outcome that is not originated from negligence.

Two Kinds of Malpractice Insurance

It is important to know that there are two basic kinds of malpractice insurance. One type is an occurrence, and the other is claims-made. Today, many insurers write on a claims-made basis. That is where policy is in effect at the time, and a claim was reported. In earlier times, the occurrence was a popular option. That is when a claim was made during a policy period, and it didn’t matter if the claim occurred during the policy period or even if the policy had been canceled.

The insurance market has experienced different times of crises, especially during the 90s. During that time, policyholders experienced very high prices that were heavily impacted by volatile changed in premiums, investment declines, and there also severe loss ratios that skyrocketed costs. Thankfully, loss ratios declined resulted in much lower insurance prices.

Many stations now require that closed claimed to be reported to the respective state claims department. This is done to understand better the claims that are linked to medical malpractice. These guidelines for this reporting were adopted by the NAIC as they also made recommendations to these state reporting.

According to Recent Studies…

Due to the low cost of malpractice insurance, it is imperative that physicians get insurance. Without insurance, health care professionals are left vulnerable and unable to pay for any cost that is associated with any claims they will face. Claims are extremely expensive, and a health care professional that is unprepared for it can face the end of their career or practice. According to recent studies, 200,000 patients in the US have died from medical errors. However, only 15%of these personal injury lawsuits involves medical malpractice and about 80%of those lawsuits ended with no payment to the injured patient or their survivors. However, the cost of litigation, cost of attorneys, and the court systems still can run high cost even with a positive result for a health care professional.

That is why it is important for medical professors to find the right insurance company that will help them in troubling times and help keep their careers safe. That is why so many health care professionals trust MedMal Direct for the medical malpractice insurance they need.